Week 39. Where has the time gone? It seems we have quite a lot of things we don’t normally buy in the bin this week.

We ran out of cat food (if you’re new to the blog, our cat barfs up any cat food within seconds of eating it; so she is fed chicken, fish and liver). We ran out on Monday, which means our local butcher is closed. My only choice was to go to the Co-Op and pick up something packaged. Yep, I could have bought a tin of fish, but would you feed your cat a tin of £1.99 red salmon?

In the end I settled for some reduced chicken, which was heavily packaged on a plastic tray.

Mr Green cracked open his Christmas pudding. You did indeed hear that right. Our Christmas table was groaning under the weight of home made goodies last year and Little Miss Green, ever the lucky girl, won a Christmas pudding in a raffle. The plastic pot will be reused, but there is some red cellophane, which, if I was an avid card maker would be reused. Alas, I am no card maker, so into the bin it goes. I leave card making to some of our more creative readers.

In the Post Office today, Little Miss Green picked up some sellotape. The girl loves her stationary and to be fair, she’d been asking me to get her some sellotape for a couple of weeks. If I was better organised, I could have bought some naked sellotape from a nearby store, but I hadn’t planned it. I resorted to the sellotape which came complete with hard plastic packaging <sigh>

In addition to his Christmas pudding, Mr Green found some unfinished chocolate croissants on the shelf. Perfectly preserved, I hasten to add (so I dare not read the ingredients list as it’s probably full of toxic preservatives). Anyway, he scoffed them down this week and I flipped the packaging to see that the tray and film are not currently recycled. Shame on you Sainsburys…

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (13)

A fine total, Mrs Green. Is it not amazing how Christmas, and related waste, persists. I have only just put away all the extra Christmas cards, the remaining stamps and the list of addresses for cards. The living room now seems strangely empty.

I did think about it and to be truthful it is getting a little whiffy (darned cat food pouches!), but we can survive it for another week or so. It’s at the bottom of the path, so nowhere near the house 😉

Ours is tomorrow, I’m not sure how much is in the bin but I hope it weighs a bit less than last week.

As for the recycling box (which missed out last time in the big freeze) it is groaning – I’ve been tantrum-free with window envelopes you’ll be pleased to hear, stripping them efficiently, but our can and jar usage has gone upwards a bit in the last few weeks.

@John Costigane: Thank you John; Christmas does not seem to come but once a year. We still have our advent angel up and she will remain until spring. We did a massive declutter today and LMG is ready to part with some of her Christmas toys already **sigh**

@maisie: Hey Maisie, the recycling shed sounds wonderful; I bet you are really pleased. Decluttering does tend to add to the load. I did my wardrobe today (which also houses toys, my ‘gifting box’ and other assorted goodies. Fortunately there were just a couple of broken hangers in there to discard.

@Cindy V: Hi Cindy – welcome to the site; how great that you found us. No Impact Man’s site is wonderful; he is such an inspiration. What do you think you might do next on your rubbish reduction mission?

@Mrs Jackson: and @Poppy: Mrs J and Poppy – that’s fantastic, well done you. I’m so proud of you both 🙂 I feel like a mother hen; so proud of her brood LOL!

I don’t dare weigh our rubbish yet, but it’s definitely much less than our neighbours!!
(always stands under half the bin, usually just one or two medium/small plastic bags tops! – one if I can help it!!)

Not my best week I’m afraid, ours clocked in at half a swing bin liner this week 🙁

Worse – it was pretty toxic, so no sorting through to analyse it. Note to self – *definitely* buy fish in own tub from fish counter, I don’t want another smelly rank bit of packaging!

On a more positive note – we had lemon chicken stir-fry last night, using a chicken breast from Pilkingtons Butchers on The Green in Bishops Cleeve. They are the biggest ones I’ve ever seen and very tasty – much recommended!